Lemons on a Pewter Plate

Beginning in 1917, Henri Matisse spent most winters in the southern French city of Nice. The warm light there transformed the artist’s work profoundly, leading him to comment: "If I had painted in the north . . . my painting would have been different. There would have been browns, grays, shadings of color through perspective." Painted during one of his sojourns to Nice, this picture’s challenging spatial construction, palpable paint texture, and patterned background recall the still lifes of Paul Cezanne. The artist was especially on Matisse’s mind when he began this composition in 1926: the same year, Matisse’s dealer staged a posthumous retrospective of over 50 of Cézanne’s major works.